Judge orders powerful ex-SC lawmaker to prison in State House corruption investigation
Jim Harrison, once a powerful South Carolina lawmaker who chaired one of the Legislature’s most influential committees, will report to prison to serve an 18-month sentence after he was convicted of perjury in 2018, State Judge Carmen Mullen ordered on Tuesday.
The judge’s order makes the now 70-year-old Harrison the first former state lawmaker to serve a prison sentence out of five others convicted so far in a multi-year investigation looking into corruption inside the General Assembly. The other former lawmakers have all pleaded guilty to various kinds of misconduct while in office, resigned from public office and been given probation.
“Good luck to you sir,” Mullen told Harrison at the end of an 18-minute hearing before the former lawmaker left the courtroom with his attorneys, Reggie Lloyd and Hunter Limbaugh.
Harrison, who appeared in good spirits despite the circumstances, is scheduled to report Thursday to prison.
In 2018, a Richland County jury found Harrison guilty of two counts of misconduct and one count of perjury after lying to the state grand jury. The misconduct charge was centered around his illegal acceptance of some $900,000 over 13 years from the now-defunct Richard Quinn & Associates consulting firm — a company that used to run the campaigns of prominent Republicans.
That money, prosecutors said, was then used to illegally influence legislation.
Harrison was the former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, a powerful legislative panel that weighs important policy decisions impacting millions of South Carolinians.
Harrison appealed his 2018 conviction and sentence.
In January, the South Carolina Supreme Court upheld his perjury conviction and 18-month prison sentence but threw out Harrison’s misconduct charges, saying Special Prosecutor David Pascoe lacked the authority to prosecute Harrison on those charges.
However, Tuesday, Harrison agreed to plead guilty to two misconduct in office charges, known as “Alford charges” meaning that Harrison asserts his innocence but admits that the prosecution had adequate evidence to convince a judge or jury beyond a reasonable doubt that he was guilty.
Mullen had allowed the former lawmaker to remain out of prison until his appeals were exhausted.
Harrison also had delayed his prison sentence due to a health condition, which will be taken care of while he is in state prison.
Bryan Stirling, the state’s prisons director, told The State in an interview this week that while he could not discuss an individual inmate’s health situation, he said the prison system is able to cope with a wide variety of serious medical conditions.
“Whatever they have, we can handle it,” Stirling said. “And if we can’t handle it, we can get them to a place that can.”
Wide-ranging probe of corruption
Harrison represented much of Richland County in his 20-plus years in the Legislature.
At the State House, he wasn’t just any of the state’s 170 lawmakers. For 13 years, he was the powerful chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and controlled the flow of much legislation through the House of Representatives.
However, unknown to the public and his colleagues, Harrison also was a member of a secretive money-for-influence network centered around the well-connected firm run by Richard Quinn Sr., coined “The Quinndom,” Pascoe said in Harrison’s 2018 trial.
While judiciary chairman, Harrison accepted secret payments totaling more than $900,000 from the prominent Columbia consulting firm, whose clients had an interest in blocking or passing legislation in the General Assembly.
At his 2018 trial, Harrison contended he was hired as a political consultant for Quinn to do non-legislative work. But Harrison was never able to produce evidence that he actually worked on any of the high-profile political campaigns the Quinn firm regularly managed.
The prosecution also put former Quinn employees on the witness stand, who testified they didn’t know of any political campaign work Harrison did. Prosecutors also produced evidence about legislation concerning Quinn’s corporate clients that Harrison had influenced.
The state grand jury that Harrison was convicted of lying to had been convened by Pascoe, interviewing more than two dozen people with knowledge of the Quinn firm’s activities.
Harrison was one of Pascoe’s highest-profile targets so far in a wide-ranging probe of corruption in the General Assembly that lasted nearly seven years, exposing how easy it is for people to make secret payments to South Carolina lawmakers.
Under state ethics laws, Harrison was required to disclose his Quinn salary of more than $80,000-a-year but did not do so, according to evidence at his trial. A key element of the charges against him was that a lawmaker is not supposed to use his position to make money.
Prosecutors’ main argument was that Harrison had, essentially, sold his influence as a prominent lawmaker and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee to secretly help the Quinn firm’s corporate clients get their bills passed in the Legislature.
The Quinn firm’s prominent corporate clients paid the firm tens of thousands of dollars every month to help them out when they had bills or interests in the Legislature, according to prosecution testimony.
Quinn’s clients included the University of South Carolina, AT&T, Palmetto Health hospitals, what was SCANA electric utility, Unisys technology and the South Carolina Trial Lawyers’ Association.
Quinn’s payments to Harrison stopped at the end of 2012, when Harrison retired from the General Assembly.
Pascoe’s work has survived numerous court challenges by defense attorneys and even Republican Attorney General Alan Wilson.
Pascoe’s other targets
Since 2014, Pascoe has secured convictions and guilty pleas of four lawmakers and has outstanding criminal charges against another former lawmaker.
Pleading guilty were former House Speaker Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston; former Rep. Rick Quinn Jr., R-Lexington; former Rep. Jim Merrill, R-Berkeley, and former state Sen. John Courson, R-Richland.
Harrison was the only former lawmaker who fought the charges.
Still pending in Pascoe’s investigation are charges against two people: former state Rep. Tracy Edge, R-Horry, who is charged with perjury, and Richard Quinn, who is also charged with perjury.
Those prosecutions will be handled by new special prosecutor, Barry Barnette, the elected 7th Circuit solicitor based in Spartanburg.
John Crangle, a Columbia attorney and longtime citizen watchdog of ethics in the General Assembly, said it was good for lawmakers to see that one of their own who committed the kind of crimes that Harrison did would be sent to prison.,
But, Crangle said, a stronger message would have been sent if Judge Mullen had ordered Harrison to forfeit the more than $900,000 he was paid by Quinn over 13 years to covertly influence legislation in the General Assembly.
This story was originally published June 29, 2021 at 1:44 PM with the headline "Judge orders powerful ex-SC lawmaker to prison in State House corruption investigation."
